If Only
by Aloony
Summary: Harry decides to change a few things and he isn't the one who has to face the consequences. Oneshot. Drabbleish. Just a thought more than a story. R&R please.


_**Disclaimer: If this were mine...well...that's even too ridiculous for me to imagine! As if! **_

_**If Only  
**_

* * *

Harry Potter was curled up in a warm blanket, his tiny fists clutched tightly around two small toys. He giggled as the unicorn and the dragon danced in his hands, moving of their own accord and even sparkling or sparking. His mother sat in a deep blue armchair, her own legs curled under her, a large book hiding her from view. She moved this obstacle aside every few seconds to look down at her son and a gentle smile would grace her lips. James was jumping around in front of Harry, making faces that the little child didn't seem to notice.

"James, you already look like that naturally. Why do you think it will amuse him?" Lily asked in a teasing tone. James stopped mid-hop, one of his legs bent and held a few feet above the ground. He shook and righted himself.

Harry giggled once more, his emerald eyes shining up at his father, toys left forgotten. "Funny," he said with a smile.

Lily nodded. "Exactly. He's a funny-looking man, your father."

James put on a brave, suffering smile. "Come now, Lily, surely you are enough of a Gryffindor to admit your fear."

"Of what?" Lily asked defiantly, leaning forward and reaching down a hand to meet Harry's as he crawled over to her.

"Of my amazingly good looks. You are hiding behind this fa?de but you know that I am just too...too...beautiful for words," James said theatrically, fainting into the couch.

Harry scowled at the thud and look back at Lily, their eyes meeting. "Crazy," Lily whispered to him. "He's just crazy."

"Cwazy," Harry agreed in a high voice.

James sat up, using his elbow to support him, and pouted. "You two are the crazy ones, conspiring against me." He crossed his arms and left it at that. There was a sound at the door, Harry turned towards it curiously.

"Pafoot?" he wondered, crawling towards the noise. Lily and James stared, tense, but there was no sign of danger.

"The wards are still in place, Lily. Peter would never..." James said in a reassuring way, for both his wife and himself.

Lily nodded distractedly but she still stood and made sure that her wand was where it was supposed to be. Harry was oblivious to the tension, he crawled closer and closer to the door. "Mooy?" There was nothing there, only the whisper of the wind across the house.

And so, the Potters went to sleep and woke up the next morning on the first day of November.

* * *

Emerald eyes sparking with a deep, cold well of hatred stared at a sobbing figure of a man on the floor before him. Whimpers and yelps came from the mass of flesh with no distinguishable pattern. 

"Now you will never know what it's like to betray them, you scum, but you will still feel this and I hope the rest of eternity is the same as your last moments because then you will finally get what you deserve," a low voice hissed, so dark and so empty but so full of hate that the figure began screaming.

"Please, please..." he cried.

"Don't bother, Pettigrew. Don't doubt that these are your last moments. I will be kind and draw them out for as long as possible." A dark smile and then the man known as Pettigrew knew only pain.

Harry cleaned his hands free from the dirty blood that soaked him, wiping his glasses of the crimson splatter. He had managed to get to Pettigrew just in time, before he had told of the location but when he was already inducted. His parents would wonder what had happened to him. Dumbledore would wonder. Harry had thought of that. He left a note, hidden in a false practically empty diary, that stated that Voldemort had contacted him and he was thinking of joining the other side. But then another page, where Pettigrew wrote of his cowardice and his plans to flee though he longed to be a servant to the Dark Lord. That would make it clear who had killed him.

Harry shrugged. That wasn't his problem, if someone was blamed for this. His other self, the Harry-who-never-had-been, now had a chance to grow and be happy. There would be no bitterness, no hate, no loss. The war would still be on but the same thing wouldn't happen in the future. Dumbledore wouldn't be dead and Harry would never have had to live with the Dursleys and put up with their torture. Now he could be free. Or, at least, a part of him could. He felt less substantial already but he was frightened. He had just un-created himself. He hoped everything went well and only realized that the one thing he hadn't prepared for in his excitement was if it didn't. He struggled, hoping to write something, what he had done, down so that it could be read and fixed should things go horribly wrong but it had been too long and he simply didn't exist. With that, the Boy-Who-Lived was gone and only Harry Potter remained.

* * *

Years later an eleven year old Harry Potter would be on his slow way to Hogwarts, his parents safely hidden by wards that none could cross. He couldn't contact them throughout the year but he knew they would be with him because of a handy mirror he had in his pocket. He met Ronald Weasley that day and they became friends. He was sorted into Gryffindor, as expected. The Dark Lord was killing more people by the day, openly by now, though his servants knew that he still feared the Potter boy because of the horrible prophecy. So when Harry was kidnapped by a group of 7th year deatheaters and taken to his lair to be killed quietly, there was a rustle of relief among the dark forces. The only threat was dead. Now to take Dumbledore, for the Ministry was already gone, and the world would be theirs. 

Dumbledore wasn't killed easily, he managed to single-handedly kill a dozen top deatheaters and then wound the Dark Lord before succumbing to a combined killing curse. The teachers were each executed in the Great Hall and the muggle-borns were rounded up and shut away in a small room in the dungeons, a high voice that no one recognized as Hermione Granger's was extinguished in a flash of green light when she attempted to curse her captor. The purebloods were taken back to one room where they could be watched, the Slythering purebloods went back to their common room, shaken but not about to complain. That was how Hogwarts was taken.

No one outside of Hogwarts knew this was happening, though Harry wasn't answering his mirror. Sirius and Remus sat in the Potter's living room, waiting for Harry's news about his first day. That report never came.

Perhaps if the previous Harry Potter had known that the entire world would be blamed for his actions, he wouldn't have done what he did.

* * *

**AN: I have no excuse. This story just kind of came up. Don't ask why. Please review and tell me what you think. **

**Until next time,**

**Aloony**


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